ght. Hence the
origin of elephants fifteen and sixteen feet high. A rod held at right
angles to the measuring rod, and parallel to the ground, will rarely
give more than ten feet, the majority being under nine."--P. 159.]

[Footnote 2: SHAW'S _Zoology_. Lond. 1806. vol. i. p. 216; ARMANDI,
_Hist. Milit. des Elephans_, liv. i. ch. i. p. 2.]

[Footnote 3: WOLF'S _Life and Adventures, &c_., p. 164. Wolf was a
native of Mecklenburg, who arrived in Ceylon about 1750, as chaplain in
one of the Dutch East Indiamen, and having been taken into the
government employment, he served for twenty years at Jaffna, first as
Secretary to the Governor, and afterwards in an office the duties of
which he describes to be the examination and signature of the "writings
which served to commence a suit in any of the Courts of justice." His
book embodies a truthful and generally accurate account of the northern
portion of the island, with which alone he was conversant, and his
narrative gives a curious insight into the policy of the Dutch
Government, and of the condition of the natives under their dominion.]

[Footnote 4: DENHAM'S _Travels, &c_., 4to p. 220. The fossil remains of
the Indian elephant have been discovered at Jabalpur, showing a height
of fifteen feet.--_Journ. Asiat. Soc. Beng_. vi. Professor ANSTED in his
_Ancient World_, p. 197, says he was informed by Dr. Falconer "that out
of eleven hundred elephants from which the tallest were selected and
measured with care, on one occasion in India, there was not one whose
height equalled eleven feet."]

For a creature of such extraordinary weight it is astonishing how
noiselessly and stealthily the elephant can escape from a pursuer. When
suddenly disturbed in the jungle, it will burst away with a rush that
seems to bear down all before it; but the noise sinks into absolute
stillness so suddenly, that a novice might well be led to suppose that
the fugitive had only halted within a few yards of him, when further
search will disclose that it has stolen silently away, making scarcely a
sound in its escape; and, stranger still, leaving the foliage almost
undisturbed by its passage.

The most venerable delusion respecting the elephant, and that which held
its ground with unequalled tenacity, is the ancient fallacy which is
explained by SIR THOMAS BROWNE in his _Pseudodoxia Epidemica_, that "it
hath no joynts; and this absurdity is seconded by another, that being
unable to lye downe it sleep